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Spread the skulk...Spread the souls...
Those words...those damned words, they echoed in his head during every waking hour, every moment asleep. It was maddening, it was torturous...it had to stop.
Sparrow looked at the massive amounts of explosives before him, rows and piles of red sticks and gunpowder lined every street, every building foundation. This was it, Sparrow knew he should have been scared and yet he only felt regret and anger.
Perhaps...perhaps the skulk had taken such an emotion from him like it had everything else that had once been human.
It couldn't take anything more...he wouldn't let it.
His final farewell and warning rested beyond the now-sealed city gate alongside every recording he ever made, the only things that would prove he had existed; an insignificant human in a world of hybrids and primordial powers beyond comprehension.
Sparrow lit the stick of dynamite in his infected hand and was met with a cacophony of cries from the parasitic fungi that had found its way into his body, his mind, and his soul; begging him to cease his actions, pleading with...no, demanding him to stop.
He didn't listen, and began to walk towards the start of the trail of explosives.
Sparrow winced as he felt the skulk try to further gain control of his motor functions out of desperation to save itself and its chosen host. He could feel the fungal tendrils of the parasite intertwine deeper beneath his skin, pulling against him as he walked closer to the line of explosives. Each step was as if his bones were made of lead and he was walking through molasses.
The faces of those he once knew and those he had met in this land flashed before him as he forced himself to move.
He remembered the good moments, from when he was still human. Memories that he looked back at with a fondness at the joy they had brought him, and melancholy at where...when it had all gone so, so horribly wrong; when he'd changed.
The bad moments were next. He saw the expression of fear on Sausage's face as the Warden struck him down, saw the look of horror in Scott's eyes before the skulk made him take the hybrid's life in the worst way possible. This was for them...ALL of them and anyone else who would stumble upon this accursed and forsaken city.
Control of his limbs was becoming more difficult, his body now almost fully taken over. But in a final act of defiance, Sparrow forced the arm holding the dynamite above his head, turned to face the closed city door...and released his grip.
The skulk screamed as the city went up in flames, pain flaring through every nerve in Sparrows body from how intertwined he had become with the now-burning fungus sending him to his knees.
A single tear dripped from his eyes as he felt the heat wave approach him. Sparrow let out final cry of agony as the explosion engulfed his prone form and then, only darkness. Sweet, blissful, and silent darkness.
He was finally free.
-
Up on the surface patches of skulk withered, their spread halted by the destruction of the gateway leading from their realm of origin.
While many of the hybrids that once lived in this land had either perished or moved on, their homes now overgrown and reclaimed by nature; those that remained may never know of the great sacrifice that had occurred deep beneath the earth.
But they would all meet again in time, for unknown to all of them, their kindred spirits would find each other and unite once more just as they always did and always will.